Volume 9, Issue V / 2026

Generative artificial intelligence increasingly mediates not only what institutions decide, but how institutions interpret people. Large language models draft case summaries, student feedback, performance reviews, clinical notes, policy briefs, creative text and administrative explanations. Existing AI governance frameworks appropriately emphasise accuracy, fairness, transparency, accountability and human oversight, yet these categories do not fully capture a distinct humanities problem: a fluent machine-generated interpretation can become institutionally authoritative before the person concerned has meaningfully articulated, contextualised or contested the account. This paper develops a person-centred framework of hermeneutic sovereignty for generative AI. Using an interdisciplinary conceptual methodology, it synthesises philosophical hermeneutics, epistemic injustice, narrative identity, human factors research, empirical studies of generative AI and contemporary governance frameworks. Hermeneutic sovereignty is defined as the situated and relational standing and capacity of persons and communities to participate meaningfully in constructing, contextualising, contesting, pluralising, revising and, where appropriate, refusing interpretations of their own experiences, identities, intentions, reasons and circumstances when those interpretations are mediated by AI. The paper identifies four mechanisms of AI-mediated interpretive foreclosure: interpretive pre-emption, hermeneutic compression, authority laundering and recursive fixation. It then proposes six dimensions for evaluating hermeneutic sovereignty and an Interpretive Foreclosure Test for institutional workflows. The analysis shows that human oversight is insufficient when the human merely approves a machine-framed account. Responsible adoption requires governance of the meaning-making process itself, including human-first elicitation, source-to-summary traceability, visible uncertainty, plural framing, contestability, correction propagation and time-bounded interpretive records. The paper concludes that trustworthy AI must preserve not only a human role in decisions, but a meaningful human standing in the production of the interpretations on which decisions depend.

In line with the global digital transformation trend, economic organisations and State management agencies are increasingly moving data to cloud platforms because of significant advantages such as lower costs, faster deployment and execution, and substantial improvements in employee productivity. In the context of data being stored across multiple countries, the involvement of numerous intermediaries, and the growing risk of cyberattacks, clearly defining the legal obligations and liabilities of actors throughout the cloud computing service supply chain has become an urgent requirement. Based on an assessment of the current legal framework in Vietnam, the author identifies legal gaps concerning the allocation of liability, cross-border data flow governance, and mechanisms for compensation for damage. On that basis, the article proposes solutions for improving the legal framework so as to balance the objectives of digital economic development and the protection of fundamental human rights.

The Secured Transactions in Movable Assets Act 2017 (STMA) of Nigeria is a major reform of the secured-credit architecture of the country. It provides a statutory framework for the creation, perfection, registration, prioritisation and realisation of security interests in movable assets. The reform is significant because it enables borrowers to use tangible and intangible movable property as collateral without necessarily surrendering possession of productive assets. This article examines whether the STMA provides a sufficiently certain legal framework for creditors, borrowers, grantors and competing claimants, with particular emphasis on the relationship between statutory rights and practical enforceability. The study adopted a doctrinal legal research methodology and analysed the statutory provisions of the STMA alongside relevant regulatory materials, authoritative institutional publications and verified scholarly literature. The 2020 documentary report on secured-transactions and credit-reporting reforms is employed as contemporaneous evidence of implementation concerns, particularly those relating to judicial capacity, creditor confidence, enforcement and dispute resolution. The article found that the STMA established a relatively comprehensive statutory architecture, particularly through its rules on security creation, registration, prioritisation and realisation. However, legal certainty is weakened where the statutory regime intersects with other registration systems, including company-charge registration, and where the effectiveness of enforcement depends upon judicial interpretation, institutional capacity and procedural clarity. The article further argued that the emphasis by the Act on registration-based priority creates substantial predictability but also makes the accuracy, accessibility and interoperability of registration systems central to the integrity of the legal framework. The article concluded that the principal challenge is no longer the absence of a statutory basis for movable-asset security but ensuring that the statutory framework operates coherently across institutions and produces predictable enforcement outcomes. It recommended greater institutional coordination, continuing judicial specialisation, clearer procedural mechanisms for dispute resolution, and closer harmonisation between the STMA and related legal regimes.

Buddhist philosophy is rooted in the ethical norms of compassion, non-violence, equality, justice, and the welfare of all sentient beings. Although these values are widely recognised as essential principles of modern democracy and human rights, they were taught by Gautama Buddha more than two thousand five hundred years ago. As the birthplace of the Buddha, Nepal has a distinctive historical and cultural connection with these teachings. This study examines the extent to which Buddhist philosophy is reflected in the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Nepal. The analysis shows that many constitutional rights, among them the rights to life, freedom, equality, justice, education, health, religious freedom, and social justice, are consistent with the ethical principles of Buddhist philosophy.

Section 111 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) places organised crime within India’s general penal law and expressly includes cyber-crimes among the forms of conduct capable of falling within that offence. The inclusion is consequential, but it can also mislead. A cyber offence does not become organised crime merely because it is technologically sophisticated, financially large, committed by several persons, or spread across multiple jurisdictions. Section 111 requires a more demanding combination: continuing unlawful activity, an organised crime syndicate, a legally relevant nexus between the accused and that syndicate, specified unlawful means, and a material-benefit objective. This paper examines that threshold through the text of Section 111, the jurisprudence developed under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 and the earliest High Court decisions applying the BNS provision. It argues that Section 111 should be interpreted as an enterprise-oriented offence rather than an aggravated form of ordinary cybercrime. Particular attention is given to recurring phishing and investment-fraud networks, mule-account structures, ransomware groups, decentralised digital syndicates, and the evidentiary problem of attributing membership or knowing participation in online criminal networks. The paper proposes a seven-part judicial framework designed to preserve Section 111 for durable criminal enterprises while preventing its routine use in ordinary multi-accused cyber-fraud prosecutions. Such an approach gives effect to legislative purpose without sacrificing legality, proportionality and individualised criminal responsibility.

Consent is the principal legitimating device of contemporary data-protection law, yet digital interfaces increasingly shape rather than merely record individual choice. This article examines whether consent obtained through dark patterns can satisfy the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and the constitutional requirement of informational autonomy. It adopts a doctrinal and interdisciplinary methodology, analysing the DPDP Act, the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, Indian constitutional privacy jurisprudence, consumer-protection regulation, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and behavioural scholarship on interface manipulation. The article finds that section 6 of the DPDP Act imposes a demanding cumulative standard requiring voluntariness, purpose specificity, adequate information, freedom from impermissible conditions and unmistakable affirmative conduct but the framework does not expressly identify manipulative design, specify interface-neutrality duties, or create a direct evidentiary presumption against consent collected through prohibited dark patterns. Fragmented enforcement between data-protection and consumer-protection institutions may therefore permit formal compliance while substantive autonomy is impaired. Comparative experience also shows that disclosure and consent alone cannot correct structural power, cognitive overload and dependency on dominant platforms. The article argues that dark patterns materially affecting a data decision should create a rebuttable presumption that consent is invalid. It proposes coordinated enforcement, symmetrical choice architecture, purpose-specific consent, auditable consent records, design-risk assessments and fiduciary-style duties for high-risk data fiduciaries. The conclusion is that Indian data-protection law should retain consent, but reposition it within an accountability framework in which data fiduciaries bear responsibility for proving not merely that a click occurred, but that the digital environment enabled a genuine choice.

The advent of the twenty-first century has precipitated an ontological crisis within the traditional architecture of criminal law. Historically anchored in the foundational pillars of individual moral culpability (mens rea) and strict territorial jurisdiction, contemporary penal jurisprudence is increasingly ill-equipped to address the unprecedented challenges posed by rapid technological advancement and systemic environmental degradation. This article critically examines the shifting paradigms of criminal liability across two distinct frontiers: the internal erosion of human agency and the external expansion of spatial jurisdiction. By analyzing the nascent fields of neuro-criminology and algorithmic predictive policing, the study investigates how structural brain imaging and machine learning are challenging the classical legal presumption of free will, forcing a precarious transition from retributive justice to pre-emptive, biological, and risk-based models of culpability. Concurrently, the paper addresses the dissolution of traditional terrestrial boundaries by evaluating the jurisdictional voids inherent in extra-terrestrial space crimes and the urgent normative imperative to codify planetary ecocide as a strict liability international offense. Adopting a rigorous doctrinal and analytical methodology, this research synthesizes emerging legal theories, international frameworks, and contemporary moral debates surrounding decriminalization and genetic manipulation. The central thesis argues that the existing legal architecture cannot merely be amended; it must be fundamentally reconstructed. The article concludes that securing justice in future decades demands a recalibrated jurisprudential model, one that mandates neuro-algorithmic transparency to safeguard the constitutional presumption of innocence, while simultaneously establishing a robust framework of “Planetary Jurisdiction” to prosecute transnational and extra-terrestrial harms.

Artificial intelligence is entering Indian criminal justice through expanding data infrastructure, analytics and machine-learning tools. Predictive policing promises better deployment of scarce police resources, earlier identification of crime patterns and faster investigation. Its constitutional difficulty, however, is not confined to technical error. Police data are produced by earlier enforcement choices; a model trained on such data may convert unequal visibility into a forecast of unequal risk. Opacity can then prevent an affected person from discovering or contesting the basis of surveillance, intervention, bail or sentencing. This paper uses a doctrinal and comparative method to examine predictive policing under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution of India, the emerging Digital Personal Data Protection framework, the United States decision in State v. Loomis, and the European Union's risk-based regulation of artificial intelligence. It argues for a constitutional permission line: place-based analytics may assist non-coercive resource allocation when supported by law, necessity, audited data and public oversight, but a person-based score must never create suspicion, justify coercive police action, or determine a judicial outcome. The paper proposes statutory authorization, algorithmic impact assessment, data-quality and equality audits, meaningful disclosure, contestability, human responsibility, procurement controls, independent supervision and sunset review. These safeguards treat efficiency as a legitimate public objective while preserving the rule that coercive state power must rest on lawful, individualized and reviewable reasons.

The widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly transformed the way people acquire knowledge, solve problems, and make decisions in both academic and professional settings. While these technologies improve efficiency and accessibility, their growing use has raised important psychological concerns regarding excessive reliance on AI for cognitive tasks. One emerging issue is AI dependency, where individuals increasingly shift mental effort to AI systems, a process commonly described as cognitive offloading. This study presents a conceptual analysis of how sustained engagement with generative AI may influence human thinking, reasoning, and decision-making. Drawing upon theories from cognitive psychology, distributed cognition, metacognition, and human–AI interaction, the paper examines the psychological mechanisms through which generative AI encourages the transfer of cognitive effort from individuals to intelligent systems. It further explores the potential impact of this shift on critical thinking, independent problem-solving, cognitive autonomy, and the quality of human decision-making. The study also discusses the circumstances under which cognitive offloading can serve as a beneficial strategy for improving efficiency, as well as the conditions in which prolonged dependence on AI may gradually weaken essential cognitive skills. Particular attention is given to factors such as user expertise, task complexity, and patterns of AI use that may shape these outcomes. By integrating insights from existing interdisciplinary literature, this paper develops a comprehensive conceptual framework explaining the relationship between generative AI use, cognitive offloading, and psychological dependency. The study aims to provide a theoretical foundation for future empirical research while offering practical insights for educators, technology developers, and policymakers seeking to encourage responsible AI use, strengthen AI literacy, and preserve human cognitive autonomy in an increasingly AI-driven society.

This paper examines how e-filing and video hearings have altered courtroom advocacy in India and asks when digital procedure advances, rather than weakens, constitutional justice. It adopts a doctrinal and analytical methodology, drawing on legislation, Supreme Court decisions, the e-Committee's model rules, official policy documents, and comparative scholarship on remote adjudication. The study finds that e-filing can reduce transaction costs, improve document control, and make case management more transparent, while video hearings can preserve continuity and remove geographical barriers. These gains, however, are uneven. Connectivity failures, inaccessible platforms, inadequate lawyer-client communication, diminished control over witnesses, data-security risks, and the loss of some non-verbal interaction can materially affect participation and equality of arms. The paper argues that the binary choice between physical and virtual courts is conceptually mistaken. Its principal contribution is a functional-suitability model: routine, document-centred, and case-management proceedings should ordinarily remain digitally accessible; credibility-sensitive evidence, serious criminal trials, and matters involving vulnerable participants should attract a rebuttable preference for physical hearing. Any departure should be supported by recorded reasons and effective participation safeguards. The paper concludes that technology is constitutionally legitimate not because it is faster, but because it can expand meaningful access without reducing fair hearing guarantees. A rights-sensitive hybrid system, supported by assisted digital access, interoperable filing standards, secure infrastructure, reasoned mode-selection, and continuing professional training, offers the most defensible path for Indian courts.

Patent filing in generative artificial intelligence has moved from a niche activity to one of the fastest-growing segments of the global patent system. The World Intellectual Property Organisation's 2026 update records that published generative-AI patent families rose from roughly 14,000 in 2023 to over 37,800 in 2025, with more than 56,000 families published across 2024 and 2025 combined, a volume exceeding the entire preceding decade. Ownership is concentrated: China accounts for the largest share, SoftBank has become the single largest corporate holder with almost 3,000 families, and a small set of conglomerates dominate the remaining top ranks. This concentration, layered onto an already dense set of overlapping claims on model architectures, training methods and specialised hardware, has revived a long-standing competition-law concern: the patent thicket. The April 2026 launch of the Shared AI License (SAIL) Foundation by Anthropic, IBM, Meta, Microsoft and Genentech, pooling more than 33,000 patent families, is the clearest institutional response to date, but its scope is narrower and its internal distribution of bargaining power more skewed than the coverage it has received suggests. This paper examines whether Indian law is equipped to respond. It reviews the Patents Act 1970 and the Competition Act 2002, situates them against the compulsory-licensing, FRAND and essential-facilities doctrines developed in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and China, and incorporates CCI's October 2025 market study on AI and the Supreme Court's September 2025 order in the Ericsson/Monsanto litigation, which narrowed rather than expanded the Commission's jurisdiction over patent-licensing conduct. The paper argues that India's principal statutory tool against patent aggregation, the compulsory licence under Chapter XVI of the Patents Act, is structurally unsuited to a thicket problem, and that competition-law intervention is now a weaker prospect than earlier commentary assumed. It closes with a set of remedies assessed on their actual, rather than assumed, capacity to work.

Globalization has altered the knowledge, skills, and professional environments for which Indian law schools prepare their students. This article examines whether the resulting transformation has produced a legal-education system that is globally competent without becoming institutionally unequal or intellectually detached from Indian constitutional and social realities. It adopts a qualitative doctrinal method and analyses the Advocates Act, 1961, the Bar Council of India Rules of Legal Education, judicial decisions on professional regulation, higher-education policy, and selected scholarship on globalization, clinical education, and decolonization. The study finds that globalization has widened curricula, encouraged interdisciplinary and experiential teaching, expanded international collaboration, and increased the value of research and digital competence. Yet these gains are distributed unevenly. Resource-rich institutions can translate global exposure into clinics, databases, exchanges, and employment networks, while many affiliated colleges remain constrained by faculty shortages, weak infrastructure, and formal compliance. A second tension arises when global relevance is equated with the transplantation of Western materials rather than the comparative study of Indian problems. The article argues for a layered-convergence model: a nationally enforceable professional floor; differentiated institutional support; locally grounded constitutional, customary, and socio-legal study; and global or technological specialization built above that foundation. It concludes that globalization should be judged not by the number of foreign subjects or partnerships a law school advertises, but by whether global knowledge improves professional competence, public service, research quality, and equal access across the legal-education system.